upcoming adventures

if i haven't mentioned how excited i am about my upcoming trips lately, whoops. cause it's all i think about these days.

for thanksgiving i'm heading north to minnesota with ks and two first year guys she's also adopted for the holiday. we're leaving weds after i finish up seminar and driving to winona - five to six hours - for a weekend that will include, according to ks, "a trip there includes taking a hunting boat across the river to some bars on the Wisconsin side in the middle of the night;" "the Turkey Bowl, which is a football (the American kind) contest held annually by my extended family on Thanksgiving Day. You do not need to be good at football or even know how to play the game to participate. Also, if someone passes the ball to anyone under the age of 8, it is an unspoken rule that you will pretend to run very hard after them but let them score the touchdown anyway;" and any/all of the following: "bowling, drinking, spending time with my cousins, drinking with my cousins, drinking with people from my high school, sleeping, and eating the best doughnuts you've ever had." sounds like a good time to me! food, drink, family, games, more food and drink....

then, in a little less than three weeks now, i'm heading back east to see all sorts of friends before going back to california for the holidays. stops to include: cambridge, maybe new haven, new york, and dc. three to four days in each place (not including new haven - that'll just be a night if i do stop), many many people to see, a ball!, either the rockettes or the nutcracker, more drinking, more eating, and all the people i love. i talk to someone i'm going to see most days online and each one makes me more excited.

it's not that i don't love being here (i do and more so each day, despite desperate posts), it's just that the people i'm going to see were my life for four years and just know me so much better than people here. mostly of course, its theater people - boardlove! -, but i'm also going to see my cty crowd for the first time in one place since 2004 - somehow they've all ended up in the dc area, aside from me of course -, and rs. rs! who i talk to pretty much every day on gchat, but who i'm going to get to see! and stay with! rs! hurrah!

something else i've been thinking about lately: i talk a lot more here than i have ever before in my life. in class, with friends, i'm chatty. i'm sometimes clever, sometimes snarky - "like the surveyors she was writing about, she didn't venture more than a mile from the border they were drawing." but mostly, i just pipe up more frequently. which, i think, more than anything, shows that this is a good place for me. everywhere else in my life, i've been the listener, the nodder, the ear to unburden to, and it's not that i don't have quiet moments, that there aren't places where i have nothing to say, but that i'm much more willing to interject now. and i love it. who knows what'll happen when i'm back amongst my boisterous friends who are used to quiet me. have i actually changed, or is it just that people here don't like to hear their own voices as much as my friends elsewhere?